This is an indie masterpiece. It's a character-driven adventure game, punctuated by intense moments of drama, horror, and disgust. Everything is executed nearly flawlessly; even the cutscenes were surprisingly good for such a small team. It's one of those games that lingers in your mind long after the credits roll.
However, it's not without flaws. There are occasional moments of 'moon logic,' where the puzzle solutions seem illogical. Additionally, the accompanying logs for the faces appear visually jarring.
However, it's not without flaws. There are occasional moments of 'moon logic,' where the puzzle solutions seem illogical. Additionally, the accompanying logs for the faces appear visually jarring.
Stasis: Bone Totem is, without a doubt, my favorite horror adventure game. It nearly perfectly lands all of the important bits -- narrative, character moments, environment, and gameplay.
You play as Mac and Charlie, a husband and wife running a salvaging operation. They stumble upon a deep sea oil rig and decide to investigate, as it may give them a way out of their crippling debts. Of course, this is a sci-fi horror game, and everything on the rig is terrible, both man made and not. This set up quickly evolves into a very dense narrative with tons of well done twists and turns -- most of which are excellently foreshadowed through environmental story telling or logs that are optionally available to read.
The character development and overall characterizations in Bone Totem are a huge leap forward from the original Stasis. It's hard to talk about with avoiding spoilers, but I was very pleasantly surprised by how much the game made me care about some rather non-traditional characters. Bone Totem also grappled with quite a bit more philosophy than the original Stasis, though it's not quite as in your face about it as some of my other favorites like Primordia and The Swapper.
The environments you explore in Bone Totem are probably the best I've ever seen in an isometric game. There's excellent and disgusting detail throughout every screen of the game, with lighting that adds a ton to the mood. The sound design and music are all excellent, with the main characters having slightly different variations on the same themes for each section of the game -- a very nice touch. The voice acting is also top notch, making the big moments of the story hit that much harder. I'm very impressed with the presentation for an indie game with a team of this size.
It's tough to land the gameplay in adventure games, but Stasis: Bone Totem delivers here too. By and large, you have your expected set of environmental and item based puzzles, which, other than a small exception or two, are very well done and help you engage with the world. There are a couple of features that really push it to being at the top of the genre, though. First is the accessibility. You can always right click to 'ping' the surroundings, revealing all descriptions and interactable objects on the current screen -- no pixel hunting necessary, if you so choose. There are also optional hints available for the puzzles like many games. Each interactable object has a separate screen that pops up for the puzzle, and all items are used in these screens, which reduces the need to try each item on every object in the environment that happens in many adventure games. The second, and more important feature, is that you are playing as multiple main characters, with inventories that are connected via the 'quantum storage device'. This gives the game a very unique and fun flow, where, if you get stuck with one character, you can switch to another. Each character also has some unique way they can interact with objects or they environment -- breaking things down, combining items, or hacking. This is both nice for variety, and allowing you to have something else to do when you're getting annoyed with a particular puzzle.
Anyway, that's enough gushing about the game. If the game appeals to you at all -- give it a try. You may also come away with a new favorite.
You play as Mac and Charlie, a husband and wife running a salvaging operation. They stumble upon a deep sea oil rig and decide to investigate, as it may give them a way out of their crippling debts. Of course, this is a sci-fi horror game, and everything on the rig is terrible, both man made and not. This set up quickly evolves into a very dense narrative with tons of well done twists and turns -- most of which are excellently foreshadowed through environmental story telling or logs that are optionally available to read.
The character development and overall characterizations in Bone Totem are a huge leap forward from the original Stasis. It's hard to talk about with avoiding spoilers, but I was very pleasantly surprised by how much the game made me care about some rather non-traditional characters. Bone Totem also grappled with quite a bit more philosophy than the original Stasis, though it's not quite as in your face about it as some of my other favorites like Primordia and The Swapper.
The environments you explore in Bone Totem are probably the best I've ever seen in an isometric game. There's excellent and disgusting detail throughout every screen of the game, with lighting that adds a ton to the mood. The sound design and music are all excellent, with the main characters having slightly different variations on the same themes for each section of the game -- a very nice touch. The voice acting is also top notch, making the big moments of the story hit that much harder. I'm very impressed with the presentation for an indie game with a team of this size.
It's tough to land the gameplay in adventure games, but Stasis: Bone Totem delivers here too. By and large, you have your expected set of environmental and item based puzzles, which, other than a small exception or two, are very well done and help you engage with the world. There are a couple of features that really push it to being at the top of the genre, though. First is the accessibility. You can always right click to 'ping' the surroundings, revealing all descriptions and interactable objects on the current screen -- no pixel hunting necessary, if you so choose. There are also optional hints available for the puzzles like many games. Each interactable object has a separate screen that pops up for the puzzle, and all items are used in these screens, which reduces the need to try each item on every object in the environment that happens in many adventure games. The second, and more important feature, is that you are playing as multiple main characters, with inventories that are connected via the 'quantum storage device'. This gives the game a very unique and fun flow, where, if you get stuck with one character, you can switch to another. Each character also has some unique way they can interact with objects or they environment -- breaking things down, combining items, or hacking. This is both nice for variety, and allowing you to have something else to do when you're getting annoyed with a particular puzzle.
Anyway, that's enough gushing about the game. If the game appeals to you at all -- give it a try. You may also come away with a new favorite.
Puzzles after puzzles to the point it threw me off immediately! Otherwise, this would be a great experience. There should be a better balance between puzzles and story progression. And most of the puzzles dont make sense either so the dev felt obligatory to make an official walkthrough. The guide itself is very lengthy and wordy, which is as boring as solving the clueless puzzles. More than that, the dev didnt even bother to explain the game mechanics. So i felt lost from the get-go.
I dont want to gatekeep anyone from trying this game. If you love puzzles heavy point and click games, this one might be for you. But if you are someone like me, you would feel sad because this game is a missed opportunity. I still want to experience the story!
I dont want to gatekeep anyone from trying this game. If you love puzzles heavy point and click games, this one might be for you. But if you are someone like me, you would feel sad because this game is a missed opportunity. I still want to experience the story!
improvement over the first game in the series for sure. all the mechanics are streamlined and the writing and voice acting is unbelievably triple a levels. while the story kinda loses me near the ending, the brotherhood certainly knows how to make an emotional journey that drives the player to finishing the game. cant wait to see what else they would do in this series!
Polaroid's Mega Rush to the 2023 End... Game 6...!
Very good point-and-click with maybe only a few hiccups in some of the traversal and puzzling. Thankfully there's not a whole lot of leaps in logic or confusing puzzles, but it would help anyone looking to check this out to have something to take notes with nearby- just in case.
Some of the later areas and puzzles can get somewhat tedious needing to backtrack through several branching rooms (thankfully segmented off after certain progression), but not having a way to recall back to prior interactive machines or what rooms had what puzzles can get kinda meddlesome- especially since you've got three characters to control.
Bone Totem's atmosphere and presentation are really stellar and I enjoyed the overall worldbuilding, especially since I think a lot of it shines without the need to check every PDA that's lying on the ground (these did get really easy to gloss over late in game). It ramps up pretty quickly which I think is fine, dunno if I would have preferred a more mellow buildup but it only gets a lot more dire from there.
I think the two main leads, Charlie and Mac are just okay- kinda got their arc from the get with maybe one or two twists to keep things going but I wasn't blown away. Moses, the tertiary robot bear and friend of their late daughter, I think is the strongest of the trio and his relation to a later character struck a bit more nearing their arc than the rest of the cast- I was kinda surprised.
Very solid horror point and click, would have preferred to finish this closer to October but had some other stuff on my plate around that time, sadly. I think some of the puzzle interaction can get kinda wonky, and some of the later areas kinda drag, but if you need something that oozes in the tense, the gory and the macabre then Stasis Bone Totem provides from start to end.
Very good point-and-click with maybe only a few hiccups in some of the traversal and puzzling. Thankfully there's not a whole lot of leaps in logic or confusing puzzles, but it would help anyone looking to check this out to have something to take notes with nearby- just in case.
Some of the later areas and puzzles can get somewhat tedious needing to backtrack through several branching rooms (thankfully segmented off after certain progression), but not having a way to recall back to prior interactive machines or what rooms had what puzzles can get kinda meddlesome- especially since you've got three characters to control.
Bone Totem's atmosphere and presentation are really stellar and I enjoyed the overall worldbuilding, especially since I think a lot of it shines without the need to check every PDA that's lying on the ground (these did get really easy to gloss over late in game). It ramps up pretty quickly which I think is fine, dunno if I would have preferred a more mellow buildup but it only gets a lot more dire from there.
I think the two main leads, Charlie and Mac are just okay- kinda got their arc from the get with maybe one or two twists to keep things going but I wasn't blown away. Moses, the tertiary robot bear and friend of their late daughter, I think is the strongest of the trio and his relation to a later character struck a bit more nearing their arc than the rest of the cast- I was kinda surprised.
Very solid horror point and click, would have preferred to finish this closer to October but had some other stuff on my plate around that time, sadly. I think some of the puzzle interaction can get kinda wonky, and some of the later areas kinda drag, but if you need something that oozes in the tense, the gory and the macabre then Stasis Bone Totem provides from start to end.
A really emotionally investing horror-adventure narrative that makes me question why more games don't have characters as gripping as this one?! It delivers a fantastic unfolding mystery at the bottom of this oceanic research station that's made even better with this cast of husband, wife, and endearing creepy robot bear that all are dealing with the grief of losing a child.
When I say the character dynamics are strong I MEAN it, the dialogue between these 3 is great and informs their characters and takes you through their arcs to see how this traumatizing story under the sea leaves them. And that's to say nothing of the EXCELLENT horror visuals, all the interactable 3D setpieces are marvelously gory and unpleasant. They really toy with some creative visuals and different ways to see the human body mutilated. I will say however the CG cutscenes were a bit hard to watch because of how dark and confusing the choreography/cinematography looks, it's hard to tell what's happening half the time and most of the death scenes in the game suffer from being weirdly shot and vague.
All in all, it's a really great point and click that doesn't fall into the mistakes others make, it's pretty easy to grasp and fun to figure out, and it's got such a great narrative it's my narrative game of the year for sure. You owe it to yourself to play through it and get attached to these lovably flawed characters in the torment nexus.
When I say the character dynamics are strong I MEAN it, the dialogue between these 3 is great and informs their characters and takes you through their arcs to see how this traumatizing story under the sea leaves them. And that's to say nothing of the EXCELLENT horror visuals, all the interactable 3D setpieces are marvelously gory and unpleasant. They really toy with some creative visuals and different ways to see the human body mutilated. I will say however the CG cutscenes were a bit hard to watch because of how dark and confusing the choreography/cinematography looks, it's hard to tell what's happening half the time and most of the death scenes in the game suffer from being weirdly shot and vague.
All in all, it's a really great point and click that doesn't fall into the mistakes others make, it's pretty easy to grasp and fun to figure out, and it's got such a great narrative it's my narrative game of the year for sure. You owe it to yourself to play through it and get attached to these lovably flawed characters in the torment nexus.
In stench there is a story.
A genuinely moving articulation of faith through virtual mediums. Hope dies in the vacuum of space and is found again through deep water, with horror stemming from the blood fuselage of sullen muscles stretched across the clockwork machinery of corporate empire; on the oceanic floor where my suns were drowned I emerge - a nü-man. I am a very smart bear now. I will see the sky.
The world of Stasis left a gash-wide imprint on me because like the dead genre that it is point’n’click needs a jolt, to be dragged across waves engines and into a space where flesh and interface meld into one - behold, my precious Bone Totem. The convergence point of adventure-play with a place vivid enough to make the trajectory of our clicks worth more than a mere curious inquiry of hidden nooks and crannies. My sea is no corporation, my sea will crush you. There can be no logical order of exploitation to the whims of the depth's currents therefore locating your story inside an environment whose hostility far surpasses any capital contempt, that will only deal in blood and iron as its sacred currencies; to make it through the day deeper truths need to be held - a belief in something other than broken ribs, powered by said-broken ribs. DEEPSEA15’s all rust and grime, a place for the true masochists, lovers of algaes and wire-grids alike, actively pressing down where it hurts and yet prodding at our insides with a great deal care - binding itself instead of shredding our characters, a slow-burn of cog-wheeled violence amidst stormy seas. Oil rig's always the play, because here it's the only play. Nobody wants to be down there yet we’re all exactly where we're meant to be - wound up in this great skeleton unfit for any sort of humane life, unable to function for long without our continued presence within itself. And in this mother of all contraptions “the only way out is through.”
The big question posed by Bone Totem's vast array of characters and computer terminals is as follows : Is survival even worth it in this world? Capital has become its own religion & theology, a literal promise of digital afterlife for the devout worker while their exploitation fuels the expansion of CAYNE Corporation and its Churches into further enslaving mankind. Liberation only exists in the glimpses of shadow organizations off-world whose motives may not even be all that benevolent and by the time the credits roll on the last act's torture porn, barely anyone is left alive to answer my questions. This is a story about what happens when you take the pay that's too good to pass and sink in the process anyway. In the derelict's underbelly Charlie, Mac and Moses make sickly sweet bed, a grieving couple and their teddy bear, each one pushed to go on by their faith in something larger than themselves - that could save them as much as it could swallow their body and soul whole. Mac is a true believer in Cayne's gospel, implanted with the technology that's supposed to transport his mind into the Nexus at the final hour; Charlie's the practical cynic, a clever and desperate engineer, while Moses sits in-between those two as Bone Totem's touch of uncanny valley genius : It's their dead daughter's animatronics bear, one infused with the artificial intelligence to match; a pure soul in the most profane body. The second stroke of ingenuity of the narrative lies in the use of each character's abilities throughout the game and the way they communicate with one another : Mac possesses the brute-strength to bend contraptions to his will while Charlie's the crafting expert who will make sparks out of the inert. Moses, due to its size and circuitry, finds wiggle room in ventilation shafts and back-panel motherboards to get its "humans" out of tight spots. But what binds this whole system together is the ability to AirDrop objects between the three of 'em in order to take advantage of their respective skills at any moment, swapping perspectives and squeezing the abstract bits out of gameplay, the actual pointing and clicking pushed to serve a constant state of fiddling and putting things together, connecting skin to metal and arteries towards their new orifices, making due of the broken state of it all just to get through the day in one piece. Shit’s a breeze for my monkey brain, as much as a slow, catastrophic systemic failure of corporate machinery can in any way be qualified as swift - spaces compressing and then stretching themselves, water-filled elevators in contrast to their air pockets, finding finality - always - in death puzzles whose fail-states splatter in grizzly 3D. Here violence is not so much a shock factor as it is the character-building exercise in which we partake with all its sloshing steel atrocity. Only the most broken and dysfunctional of families could get through this. But even then survival is not the point in Bone Totem. What sits at the heart of the game's troubled conscience is artifice and hesitation - how we may progressively find ourselves bound by the clauses of the new flesh. Everyone on DEEPSEA15 is kept on a loose leash, wanting out of the hurt that comes from being born in this putrid place called reality. And it's not happening. And it keeps happening. No one's got the answer - but we can't leave.
[This is a MULE Emergency Broadcast]
WATER PRESSURE REACHING CRITICAL LEVELS_
SEEK THE SUN OR DROWN IN THE DEEP_
BE A GOOD BEAR NOW_
Towards the end of third chapter, Moses discovers that one of the trapped scientists who's been helping him through radio in exchange for his own freedom was nothing more than a brain in the proverbial jar, condemned to sink with the rest of the station. We enter a room and find the cable-crucified approximation of a circulatory system atop which sits what little remains of Faran, a consciousness unaware of their own predicament. Eyes in the dark. It's impossible for me not to think of my first steps back in PATHOS-II, finding the robot body of Carl Semken and him looking at me, believing, truly believing, that he was still human - and then unplugging the cord because the only way out is through. Bone Totem walks a lot like SOMA - threading a bleak and complex existential line - but what separates it from Frictional's work mirrors the gap in emotional fortitude between the original Blade Runner and 2049. The question that gets its hooks into me isn't whether Deckard is a replicant or not and, henceforth, if androids do indeed dream of electric sheeps but rather the turnstiles of such an existence, or in other words, what meaning do you ascribe to the wooden horse that K finds in the furnace? Knowing you are a byproduct possessing the ability - however life-like in its fakery - to feel things and coming back to DEEPSEA15 with that same line of questioning, from Moses to Faran, presents a difficulty...the horse could, in essence, mean nothing - in fact it does. So why the struggle? Moses is remarkable in his artificiality because it grants him the most human quality a robot could have : Delusion. Contrary to Faran who scorns his watery prison as a physical manifestation of Hell, Moses only perceives it through the rosy glass-eyed programming of a teddy bear who does not like to be wet - the lens of tales and arborescences. This world taken as a whole may well be humanity's future purgatory but Moses doesn't see it that way. How could he? Charlie and Mac may still survive. The memory of the little girl he played with remains. Reality as he perceives it is still magical, still to be thought of as something more than an oil spill even as he himself is nothing more than a facsimile. A faith brittler than bones is still worth carrying by souls untainted. And so as Moses leaves the room for the last time, swearing hope to his computer brethren, the once-human Faran asks :
"I...can never leave here. Can I?"
To which the plastic bear responds with one of the most heartbreaking lines of dialogue I’ve ever heard in a videogame :
"Yes, but it is still a story."
Moses will see the sun again. But even if he doesn’t, the only way out is through. There’s still life to be found under the water.
A genuinely moving articulation of faith through virtual mediums. Hope dies in the vacuum of space and is found again through deep water, with horror stemming from the blood fuselage of sullen muscles stretched across the clockwork machinery of corporate empire; on the oceanic floor where my suns were drowned I emerge - a nü-man. I am a very smart bear now. I will see the sky.
The world of Stasis left a gash-wide imprint on me because like the dead genre that it is point’n’click needs a jolt, to be dragged across waves engines and into a space where flesh and interface meld into one - behold, my precious Bone Totem. The convergence point of adventure-play with a place vivid enough to make the trajectory of our clicks worth more than a mere curious inquiry of hidden nooks and crannies. My sea is no corporation, my sea will crush you. There can be no logical order of exploitation to the whims of the depth's currents therefore locating your story inside an environment whose hostility far surpasses any capital contempt, that will only deal in blood and iron as its sacred currencies; to make it through the day deeper truths need to be held - a belief in something other than broken ribs, powered by said-broken ribs. DEEPSEA15’s all rust and grime, a place for the true masochists, lovers of algaes and wire-grids alike, actively pressing down where it hurts and yet prodding at our insides with a great deal care - binding itself instead of shredding our characters, a slow-burn of cog-wheeled violence amidst stormy seas. Oil rig's always the play, because here it's the only play. Nobody wants to be down there yet we’re all exactly where we're meant to be - wound up in this great skeleton unfit for any sort of humane life, unable to function for long without our continued presence within itself. And in this mother of all contraptions “the only way out is through.”
The big question posed by Bone Totem's vast array of characters and computer terminals is as follows : Is survival even worth it in this world? Capital has become its own religion & theology, a literal promise of digital afterlife for the devout worker while their exploitation fuels the expansion of CAYNE Corporation and its Churches into further enslaving mankind. Liberation only exists in the glimpses of shadow organizations off-world whose motives may not even be all that benevolent and by the time the credits roll on the last act's torture porn, barely anyone is left alive to answer my questions. This is a story about what happens when you take the pay that's too good to pass and sink in the process anyway. In the derelict's underbelly Charlie, Mac and Moses make sickly sweet bed, a grieving couple and their teddy bear, each one pushed to go on by their faith in something larger than themselves - that could save them as much as it could swallow their body and soul whole. Mac is a true believer in Cayne's gospel, implanted with the technology that's supposed to transport his mind into the Nexus at the final hour; Charlie's the practical cynic, a clever and desperate engineer, while Moses sits in-between those two as Bone Totem's touch of uncanny valley genius : It's their dead daughter's animatronics bear, one infused with the artificial intelligence to match; a pure soul in the most profane body. The second stroke of ingenuity of the narrative lies in the use of each character's abilities throughout the game and the way they communicate with one another : Mac possesses the brute-strength to bend contraptions to his will while Charlie's the crafting expert who will make sparks out of the inert. Moses, due to its size and circuitry, finds wiggle room in ventilation shafts and back-panel motherboards to get its "humans" out of tight spots. But what binds this whole system together is the ability to AirDrop objects between the three of 'em in order to take advantage of their respective skills at any moment, swapping perspectives and squeezing the abstract bits out of gameplay, the actual pointing and clicking pushed to serve a constant state of fiddling and putting things together, connecting skin to metal and arteries towards their new orifices, making due of the broken state of it all just to get through the day in one piece. Shit’s a breeze for my monkey brain, as much as a slow, catastrophic systemic failure of corporate machinery can in any way be qualified as swift - spaces compressing and then stretching themselves, water-filled elevators in contrast to their air pockets, finding finality - always - in death puzzles whose fail-states splatter in grizzly 3D. Here violence is not so much a shock factor as it is the character-building exercise in which we partake with all its sloshing steel atrocity. Only the most broken and dysfunctional of families could get through this. But even then survival is not the point in Bone Totem. What sits at the heart of the game's troubled conscience is artifice and hesitation - how we may progressively find ourselves bound by the clauses of the new flesh. Everyone on DEEPSEA15 is kept on a loose leash, wanting out of the hurt that comes from being born in this putrid place called reality. And it's not happening. And it keeps happening. No one's got the answer - but we can't leave.
[This is a MULE Emergency Broadcast]
WATER PRESSURE REACHING CRITICAL LEVELS_
SEEK THE SUN OR DROWN IN THE DEEP_
BE A GOOD BEAR NOW_
Towards the end of third chapter, Moses discovers that one of the trapped scientists who's been helping him through radio in exchange for his own freedom was nothing more than a brain in the proverbial jar, condemned to sink with the rest of the station. We enter a room and find the cable-crucified approximation of a circulatory system atop which sits what little remains of Faran, a consciousness unaware of their own predicament. Eyes in the dark. It's impossible for me not to think of my first steps back in PATHOS-II, finding the robot body of Carl Semken and him looking at me, believing, truly believing, that he was still human - and then unplugging the cord because the only way out is through. Bone Totem walks a lot like SOMA - threading a bleak and complex existential line - but what separates it from Frictional's work mirrors the gap in emotional fortitude between the original Blade Runner and 2049. The question that gets its hooks into me isn't whether Deckard is a replicant or not and, henceforth, if androids do indeed dream of electric sheeps but rather the turnstiles of such an existence, or in other words, what meaning do you ascribe to the wooden horse that K finds in the furnace? Knowing you are a byproduct possessing the ability - however life-like in its fakery - to feel things and coming back to DEEPSEA15 with that same line of questioning, from Moses to Faran, presents a difficulty...the horse could, in essence, mean nothing - in fact it does. So why the struggle? Moses is remarkable in his artificiality because it grants him the most human quality a robot could have : Delusion. Contrary to Faran who scorns his watery prison as a physical manifestation of Hell, Moses only perceives it through the rosy glass-eyed programming of a teddy bear who does not like to be wet - the lens of tales and arborescences. This world taken as a whole may well be humanity's future purgatory but Moses doesn't see it that way. How could he? Charlie and Mac may still survive. The memory of the little girl he played with remains. Reality as he perceives it is still magical, still to be thought of as something more than an oil spill even as he himself is nothing more than a facsimile. A faith brittler than bones is still worth carrying by souls untainted. And so as Moses leaves the room for the last time, swearing hope to his computer brethren, the once-human Faran asks :
"I...can never leave here. Can I?"
To which the plastic bear responds with one of the most heartbreaking lines of dialogue I’ve ever heard in a videogame :
"Yes, but it is still a story."
Moses will see the sun again. But even if he doesn’t, the only way out is through. There’s still life to be found under the water.
my sweet boy moses .......... my SON
I am a clever bear. I do not like water.
Oh this game is such a gem. Truly it is. The presentation is impecable along with the voice work. The graphical style is one I've not seen used really in any other game. The music is so atmospheric and well done. The puzzles are well made with some really well done visual design. My only gripes are around sometimes gameplay feeling a bit clunky and not being able to get past my questions around how these 3 characters who spend so much time SEPARATE can immediately share all of their inventories.
Oh this game is such a gem. Truly it is. The presentation is impecable along with the voice work. The graphical style is one I've not seen used really in any other game. The music is so atmospheric and well done. The puzzles are well made with some really well done visual design. My only gripes are around sometimes gameplay feeling a bit clunky and not being able to get past my questions around how these 3 characters who spend so much time SEPARATE can immediately share all of their inventories.
Pending...
This review contains spoilers
I didn't like the previous Stasis enough to finish it, but I bought both of them together so I was going to end up giving this one a shot anyway. Luckily, it's an improvement on all axes.
The gameplay is significantly streamlined, featuring a ping system that takes the pixel-hunting guesswork entirely out of the equation. This works in conjunction with the good sense of pace the game inherits from its predecessor, such that there are always new puzzles to mess around with, but never so many at once as to be overwhelming (even with three protagonists to juggle). Another advantage of Bone Totem's is that it has an official walkthrough on its Steam page, which you'll need because there are two or three puzzles that are legit just horrible. Good hit rate overall, though.
I also much preferred Bone Totem's story over the original's. It has so many disparate elements shoved into it that it can't help but be interesting, even if I'd hesitate to call it "good". The Cayne Corporation from the original has been elevated to religion status, cranking its cartoon villainy quotient past "cliche" and onto "hilarious". Mac, one of the protagonists, even uses "Cayne" in place of "God" in his expletives (Ford only knows who would consider that a good idea). All of this is presumably due to the Nexus, some sort of digital heaven attained through an implant that uploads you to the cloud when you die. This is a premise that I think could have been pretty interesting if it had been given any narrative weight; instead, it's referred to rarely and obliquely, and by the time you've pieced together what it even is you have more important things to deal with.
Another example of Bone Totem's all-over-the-place-ness is the threats you encounter. It seems like every single employee at Deepsea-15 had their own pet science experiment, and even now I can't remember which of the ten different disasters I read about actually put the place out of its misery in the end. Many times, Bone Totem tells the classic anti-capitalist story of the faceless executive trampling over the passion of the ground-level employee because it isn't profitable... except at Cayne Corporation, everyone's passion seems to be for dangerous and morally repulsive cowboy science, and it makes the execs look almost like the good guys for trying to quash them. The parasite that gives everyone a shared hallucination was another one of those neat ideas that felt like it could have had more oomph, especially as a parallel to the Nexus, but you only get a bit of a glimpse into it near the end.
Speaking of the end... cannibal mole people! I appreciate their inclusion, as the occult symbolism lets the game greatly widen the scope and variety of its setpieces, though they have a pretty tenuous connection to the earlier half of the story since the Cayne scientists are all too busy with their own sins against God to care about the city of bone and flesh they live on top of.
Also one of the protagonists is a sapient teddy bear? It's an odd choice, to be sure. Most of Moses' arc didn't quite resonate with me: it's not very compelling for a robot to overcome fear or guilt, it just makes me wonder why a children's toy would be given those feelings in the first place. That said, once I got over that initial cynicism I found Moses' affectations pretty endearing, and his unlikely friendship with the shockingly earnest Faran ended up being my favorite part of the game.
This has been a very scattershot review, but in my defense it's a very scattershot game. That's not an approach I usually appreciate, but ultimately I think it worked out well for Bone Totem. In time, I'm bound to remember the stuff that stuck more than the stuff that didn't.
The gameplay is significantly streamlined, featuring a ping system that takes the pixel-hunting guesswork entirely out of the equation. This works in conjunction with the good sense of pace the game inherits from its predecessor, such that there are always new puzzles to mess around with, but never so many at once as to be overwhelming (even with three protagonists to juggle). Another advantage of Bone Totem's is that it has an official walkthrough on its Steam page, which you'll need because there are two or three puzzles that are legit just horrible. Good hit rate overall, though.
I also much preferred Bone Totem's story over the original's. It has so many disparate elements shoved into it that it can't help but be interesting, even if I'd hesitate to call it "good". The Cayne Corporation from the original has been elevated to religion status, cranking its cartoon villainy quotient past "cliche" and onto "hilarious". Mac, one of the protagonists, even uses "Cayne" in place of "God" in his expletives (Ford only knows who would consider that a good idea). All of this is presumably due to the Nexus, some sort of digital heaven attained through an implant that uploads you to the cloud when you die. This is a premise that I think could have been pretty interesting if it had been given any narrative weight; instead, it's referred to rarely and obliquely, and by the time you've pieced together what it even is you have more important things to deal with.
Another example of Bone Totem's all-over-the-place-ness is the threats you encounter. It seems like every single employee at Deepsea-15 had their own pet science experiment, and even now I can't remember which of the ten different disasters I read about actually put the place out of its misery in the end. Many times, Bone Totem tells the classic anti-capitalist story of the faceless executive trampling over the passion of the ground-level employee because it isn't profitable... except at Cayne Corporation, everyone's passion seems to be for dangerous and morally repulsive cowboy science, and it makes the execs look almost like the good guys for trying to quash them. The parasite that gives everyone a shared hallucination was another one of those neat ideas that felt like it could have had more oomph, especially as a parallel to the Nexus, but you only get a bit of a glimpse into it near the end.
Speaking of the end... cannibal mole people! I appreciate their inclusion, as the occult symbolism lets the game greatly widen the scope and variety of its setpieces, though they have a pretty tenuous connection to the earlier half of the story since the Cayne scientists are all too busy with their own sins against God to care about the city of bone and flesh they live on top of.
Also one of the protagonists is a sapient teddy bear? It's an odd choice, to be sure. Most of Moses' arc didn't quite resonate with me: it's not very compelling for a robot to overcome fear or guilt, it just makes me wonder why a children's toy would be given those feelings in the first place. That said, once I got over that initial cynicism I found Moses' affectations pretty endearing, and his unlikely friendship with the shockingly earnest Faran ended up being my favorite part of the game.
This has been a very scattershot review, but in my defense it's a very scattershot game. That's not an approach I usually appreciate, but ultimately I think it worked out well for Bone Totem. In time, I'm bound to remember the stuff that stuck more than the stuff that didn't.
I enjoyed the first Stasis and was happy to find out that the second entry is an improvement pretty much in every aspect.
First of all I just love the environment design and the atmosphere generally. It has this terrifying but beautiful Giger-esque art style that just resonates with me.
I also found the story to be more intriguing and suspenseful this time. Usually I am not big fan of reading text logs in games but this is one of the exceptions as the writing is strong enough and it has that puzzle aspect of trying to understand and piece together whatever happened here in this underwater hellhole. It does lose some steam at the end as some of the dialogue drags on and you cannot move between areas when people are talking which slows things too much for my liking.
On the gameplay side I think it found this nice balance between puzzles being challenging but understandable that make sense in the context of the world. I was little worried as you can control three characters that this could turn out the be just an item hunt and trying everything everywhere but this was luckily never a problem for me as interactable sections are marked as blue and visual detail that cannot be interacted are marked as green which makes clear what is an puzzle and what is not.
And yes Moses, you're a very smart bear.
First of all I just love the environment design and the atmosphere generally. It has this terrifying but beautiful Giger-esque art style that just resonates with me.
I also found the story to be more intriguing and suspenseful this time. Usually I am not big fan of reading text logs in games but this is one of the exceptions as the writing is strong enough and it has that puzzle aspect of trying to understand and piece together whatever happened here in this underwater hellhole. It does lose some steam at the end as some of the dialogue drags on and you cannot move between areas when people are talking which slows things too much for my liking.
On the gameplay side I think it found this nice balance between puzzles being challenging but understandable that make sense in the context of the world. I was little worried as you can control three characters that this could turn out the be just an item hunt and trying everything everywhere but this was luckily never a problem for me as interactable sections are marked as blue and visual detail that cannot be interacted are marked as green which makes clear what is an puzzle and what is not.
And yes Moses, you're a very smart bear.
El lore que rodea a todos los juegos de STASIS es inquietante, aterrador y del gore más puro que haya visto o jugado.
En los primeros minutos de BONE TOTEM, ya nos damos cuenta de esto y de que el relato que nos van a contar no va a ser un camino de rosas.
El juego se divide en capítulos que nos irán introduciendo en las entrañas de la corporación CAYNE, sus experimentos, su religión (de la que ya vimos retazos en CAYNE y STASIS) y de lo que descubrieron en el fondo…
El juego nos presenta a tres personajes que controlaremos a la vez por el DeepSea15, el centro marítimo de investigación y desarrollo de Cayne: Charlie, Mac y el osito robótico Moisés.
Estos tres personajes dan por casualidad con esta estructura en mitad del océano, y se precipitan en su interior en busca de supervivientes.
Al contrario de otros juegos de terror, que el miedo viene en formato scarejumps, figuras tenebrosas o situaciones de pánico, en los juegos de The Brotherhood viene en dosis de lectura de PDA y diarios.
La atmosfera claustrofóbica, de agobio y auténtico terror, nos la iremos creando nosotros conforme avancemos en su historia y lectura de interminables textos. Y los creadores nos la adornan con figuras corpóreas desmembradas, generando figuras de verdadero arte tenebroso.
Sin entrar en destripamientos y en profundidad en la historia, os diré que es un juego que no decepciona. Engancha de principio a fin. Te hace conectar con cada uno de sus personajes, sus motivaciones, su porqué de cada uno de sus actos.
Un relato terrorífico del que quieres escapar, pero quieres saber más.
La BSO que te acompaña todo el juego te hace partícipe en las macabras escenas que vemos y que nos cuentan. Cada uno de sus temas está bien encajado en la parte que estemos jugando en ese momento, con la atmosfera de ruidecitos, goteos, llantos… que ya nos tienen acostumbrados The Brotherhood.
El arte es brutal. Detallado, terrífico y extremadamente gore. Inspirado en el arte de H.R. Giger y que hace que te estremezcas en cada uno de sus detalles.
En definitiva, si habéis jugado los dos anteriores (CAYNE y STASIS) es extremadamente recomendable que juguéis a esta entrega, puesto resuelve ciertas dudas de esa gran religión que nos promete Cayne, con sus 9 Numen.
Un juego redondo y que te invita a rejugar para descubrir todos sus entresijos y logros.
En los primeros minutos de BONE TOTEM, ya nos damos cuenta de esto y de que el relato que nos van a contar no va a ser un camino de rosas.
El juego se divide en capítulos que nos irán introduciendo en las entrañas de la corporación CAYNE, sus experimentos, su religión (de la que ya vimos retazos en CAYNE y STASIS) y de lo que descubrieron en el fondo…
El juego nos presenta a tres personajes que controlaremos a la vez por el DeepSea15, el centro marítimo de investigación y desarrollo de Cayne: Charlie, Mac y el osito robótico Moisés.
Estos tres personajes dan por casualidad con esta estructura en mitad del océano, y se precipitan en su interior en busca de supervivientes.
Al contrario de otros juegos de terror, que el miedo viene en formato scarejumps, figuras tenebrosas o situaciones de pánico, en los juegos de The Brotherhood viene en dosis de lectura de PDA y diarios.
La atmosfera claustrofóbica, de agobio y auténtico terror, nos la iremos creando nosotros conforme avancemos en su historia y lectura de interminables textos. Y los creadores nos la adornan con figuras corpóreas desmembradas, generando figuras de verdadero arte tenebroso.
Sin entrar en destripamientos y en profundidad en la historia, os diré que es un juego que no decepciona. Engancha de principio a fin. Te hace conectar con cada uno de sus personajes, sus motivaciones, su porqué de cada uno de sus actos.
Un relato terrorífico del que quieres escapar, pero quieres saber más.
La BSO que te acompaña todo el juego te hace partícipe en las macabras escenas que vemos y que nos cuentan. Cada uno de sus temas está bien encajado en la parte que estemos jugando en ese momento, con la atmosfera de ruidecitos, goteos, llantos… que ya nos tienen acostumbrados The Brotherhood.
El arte es brutal. Detallado, terrífico y extremadamente gore. Inspirado en el arte de H.R. Giger y que hace que te estremezcas en cada uno de sus detalles.
En definitiva, si habéis jugado los dos anteriores (CAYNE y STASIS) es extremadamente recomendable que juguéis a esta entrega, puesto resuelve ciertas dudas de esa gran religión que nos promete Cayne, con sus 9 Numen.
Un juego redondo y que te invita a rejugar para descubrir todos sus entresijos y logros.
This is really good! Incredible atmosphere, solid puzzles, and a good story. Somehow even more Grand Guignol than Stasis. Much longer and more complex than you think.
I love the traditional-style Wadjet Eye adventure revival games but I'm also really happy other people are pushing the format in different directions and trying new things. Great time to be a point-n-click fan.
I love the traditional-style Wadjet Eye adventure revival games but I'm also really happy other people are pushing the format in different directions and trying new things. Great time to be a point-n-click fan.
I wanted to like this more, it starts out so well. There's a beautiful retro 3D style that emulates the FMVs of the late 90s when everyone was just so excited to see 3D renders, and you're thrown into this industrial sci-fi horror scenario. It has some nice tweaks on the graphic adventure format, letting you right click to see where every interactable is, and putting all puzzles & items on dedicated zoomed in interaction shots so it's hard to miss the important stuff. And yet, I still wound up in the same rut as the old games: completely unable to understand the game's logic.
"This thermite will eat through anything, EVEN underwater", the game tells me. Fantastic. I've gone on a long quest to assemble the thermite, and finally, it will solve the puzzle I've been stuck on for ages: blasting through the hull of an old ship to grant me access to the next area. Except. It doesn't. The characters continue to gibber about how great the thermite is, but whenever I try and rub it on the hull it stubbornly refuses to work. Elsewhere, I line up the panels in an image puzzle and clone a demonic shrimp. "Perfect," the characters announce. "It's just like the old one. This is exactly what we need." I have no idea why we need this shrimp.
Most of all, it feels like the story just isn't unfolding in a very satisfying way. There are a lot of well written log entries - naturally just lying around everywhere - which tell the story of a doomed drilling operation. At first they're fascinating, but they start to become repetitive without progressing anything. Rather than drawing closer to the point, each one of them reads more or less like "I hate working for Devil Incorporated. They forced my mum to mine asteroids to pay off my medical debt AND they won't let me eat the glowing green slime I found at the bottom of the sea. Well joke's on them, I'm eating it anyway!!!" There's a lot of tantalising world building to do with some sort of demonic religious/corporate overlord that took over the world, but I got the sense that this was set dressing that the game didn't want to explain. It's unfortunate, because it's such a big juicy idea that it totally distracts from the main story. I don't care at all about the magic mushrooms on the sea floor, I want to know about Cayne's Reign!
Alas!
Nothing but praise for Moses, however. He is too pure for this world.
"This thermite will eat through anything, EVEN underwater", the game tells me. Fantastic. I've gone on a long quest to assemble the thermite, and finally, it will solve the puzzle I've been stuck on for ages: blasting through the hull of an old ship to grant me access to the next area. Except. It doesn't. The characters continue to gibber about how great the thermite is, but whenever I try and rub it on the hull it stubbornly refuses to work. Elsewhere, I line up the panels in an image puzzle and clone a demonic shrimp. "Perfect," the characters announce. "It's just like the old one. This is exactly what we need." I have no idea why we need this shrimp.
Most of all, it feels like the story just isn't unfolding in a very satisfying way. There are a lot of well written log entries - naturally just lying around everywhere - which tell the story of a doomed drilling operation. At first they're fascinating, but they start to become repetitive without progressing anything. Rather than drawing closer to the point, each one of them reads more or less like "I hate working for Devil Incorporated. They forced my mum to mine asteroids to pay off my medical debt AND they won't let me eat the glowing green slime I found at the bottom of the sea. Well joke's on them, I'm eating it anyway!!!" There's a lot of tantalising world building to do with some sort of demonic religious/corporate overlord that took over the world, but I got the sense that this was set dressing that the game didn't want to explain. It's unfortunate, because it's such a big juicy idea that it totally distracts from the main story. I don't care at all about the magic mushrooms on the sea floor, I want to know about Cayne's Reign!
Alas!
Nothing but praise for Moses, however. He is too pure for this world.
While it is a big upgrade over the previous game and I would certainly like to see what this team does next, a bit more restraint would certainly benefit them. When you find a flayed person in the second "room" of the game and then a...thing roughly 40% through it, there's not much room to escalate to it just sort of bathes in it's own brutality and horror. There is little build up and no real escalation since it already starts you at 9. Some of the puzzles are slightly annoying with interactable points that don't tell you what they are supposed to be (a switch? a button? A slot?) or what prevents you from using them, especially because all the items have to be moved between the three characters which, since that can just happen whenever you want feels a bit pointless. A shared inventory would make just as much sense in the world of the game and alliviate some that tedium. Still, it is a good game after all with an interesting and mostly likeable crew of characters and a weird tale to tell.
Great point and click horror adventure. The character, setting and the plot are engaging all the way through. It poses very interesting questions on life and morality that are really fun to think about.
Such a cool world, with three equally creative player characters. Only had one or two puzzles that forced me to use a walkthrough, otherwise a super immersive point and click.
a step up in every way possible from stasis and cayne. fixed my problems i had with the other two (no more blown audio or pixel hunting), and then went even further by making one of the most interesting characters ive seen in a long time.
truly unique; incredible visuals and sound. some of the animations are uncanny and i would prefer if charlie did not breath directly into my ear, but these are only very very small complaints. can easily and solidly recommend this game to any fans of point and click horror. i definitely intend to return and play through it again at some point, by far my game of the year
truly unique; incredible visuals and sound. some of the animations are uncanny and i would prefer if charlie did not breath directly into my ear, but these are only very very small complaints. can easily and solidly recommend this game to any fans of point and click horror. i definitely intend to return and play through it again at some point, by far my game of the year
This game is a pretty classic point and click game with an interesting world and story. It's follows three caracters that we get to know along the game. It's a farily long game for this genre, it took me about 10 hours to complet.
I think even full price the game is worth buying.
I think even full price the game is worth buying.
a fantastic game, and everything a sequel should be. reminds me a lot of sanitarium, and anyone looking for a good point and click horror SHOULD play this
I just finished the game and I am in tears. This might be the best story I've experienced in a horror game (at least in recent memory).
WIKTOBER 2023 Log #001 - Stasis: BONE TOTEM
I am so fucking down with this game its unreal.
As far as point and click games go its good, great even. The gimmick is having a three person party where you can swap control over any member at any time, as well as sharing each item between each member. The puzzles themselves are pretty reasonable, especially compared to other adventure games. Things generally make sense and if you read PDA's/logs, and the flavor text each character has for any particular item, then you won't get stuck often. So mechanically the game is solid. But the story, setting, and characters are what elevate it.
This is peak sci-fi horror. The only thing that comes to mind that tops it is Soma, and that's saying a lot. The actual timeline of events is confusing as hell, but thankfully the side characters, all equally interesting to listen to, fill in the gaps.
The dynamic between the three playable characters is great. Husband, wife, and their deceased daughter's animatronic AI teddy bear make a great combo.
Oh yeah, Moses. I could write this whole review on how much I love Moses. He is the cleverest little bear. The relationship between him and one of the side characters that show up is actually very touching. Then there's Calaban. Who/what he is is kind of a spoiler, but what I can say is that he's an aggravating little cunt in the best way possible.
Bone Totem is another entry in the nuthutcore genre and holy shit does it come out swinging. Can't wait to see what this studio produces next.
My Moses. My sweet Moses.
I am so fucking down with this game its unreal.
As far as point and click games go its good, great even. The gimmick is having a three person party where you can swap control over any member at any time, as well as sharing each item between each member. The puzzles themselves are pretty reasonable, especially compared to other adventure games. Things generally make sense and if you read PDA's/logs, and the flavor text each character has for any particular item, then you won't get stuck often. So mechanically the game is solid. But the story, setting, and characters are what elevate it.
This is peak sci-fi horror. The only thing that comes to mind that tops it is Soma, and that's saying a lot. The actual timeline of events is confusing as hell, but thankfully the side characters, all equally interesting to listen to, fill in the gaps.
The dynamic between the three playable characters is great. Husband, wife, and their deceased daughter's animatronic AI teddy bear make a great combo.
Oh yeah, Moses. I could write this whole review on how much I love Moses. He is the cleverest little bear. The relationship between him and one of the side characters that show up is actually very touching. Then there's Calaban. Who/what he is is kind of a spoiler, but what I can say is that he's an aggravating little cunt in the best way possible.
Bone Totem is another entry in the nuthutcore genre and holy shit does it come out swinging. Can't wait to see what this studio produces next.
My Moses. My sweet Moses.
The best game out of the Stasis trilogy. This is 100% correct, I AM NUMEN.
The original Stasis is one of my favorite point-and-click adventure games. The atmosphere, the raw, gory imagery, the soundscape, and the overall tone were just fantastic. While the story and characters themselves were forgettable, you really got pulled into the alien world. Bone Totem continues this path but does a better job with the characters and story as well.
You start the game as a married couple who do contract work for private companies. Mostly rescue and salvage operations. Mac and Charlie have their own unique skills. Charlie can take two items together to combine them, and Mac can break a single item apart into a new item. You will use these features throughout the entire game, as items can be swapped between characters at any time, making backtracking a minimal thing. Oddly, this trick is never explained, as how do these items warp between characters no matter what situation they are in? Moses is your third character, introduced late in the first chapter, and he has no abilities. He is an animatronic bear with some sort of AI.
Just like in the first game, you can click around to move the characters on the pre-rendered backgrounds. Right-clicking will flash green and blue dots on the screen. Green are descriptive items, and blue are interactive ones. Always go for the blue. Each screen usually has something to interact with, and if you run out of things to do, then another character needs to advance the story somehow. The swapping of objects is how you solve puzzles. Some puzzles are strewn across all the characters who need to do something. Create a new object, find an object, break down an object, or something along those lines.
Cut scenes are all voiced, with pre-rendered scenes sprinkled here and there. Every time you enter a new area or interact with a blue object, a cutscene usually plays. The story is well-detailed, and it takes its time over the 8–10 hours it takes to complete the game. The salvage operation turns into a horror and nightmarish hellscape quickly, and the descent is pretty amazing. The visuals change constantly as you progress, and you always run into "WTF?" moments. The Brotherhood is great at making the game look like a 90s point-and-click with fantastically drawn art. A mix of their own style fused with H.R. Giger is just wonderful, and I can't get enough of it. If you liked the look of the recently released Scorn, you will love the art in this game.
A lot of disturbing imagery fills this game. Flayed bodies, disemboweled creatures, eerily humanoid androids, and weird aliens The list goes on, and every time you interact with one that ends up being a blue object, you get an up-close, full view, and it's marvelous and incredibly disturbing. The Brotherhood set the bar in the art department for retro point-and-click games. Every screen has something new to look at, and I couldn't wait to see what they would show visually. Thankfully, the voice acting is pretty good, and the pre-rendered cut scenes are janky, but in that classic '90s way, that's so bad it's good. They are clearly made this way on purpose, and I love it.
Thankfully, I always felt a sense of progression thanks to the lack of backtracking. The worst it got was when I remembered a clue maybe six screens back and forgot to take a photo or screenshot of it. Usually, it was my own fault. Puzzles are also not insanely cryptic. Usually, some fiddling here, some thinking there, and you always get that "AHA!" moment fairly quickly. Every time I got a new object, I would try it out on the next blue object for each character. Some items get held on to for hours at a time; some are used right away; but few are obvious in their uses.
Overall, Bone Totem is a great follow-up to the original. The gorgeous art, dark horror, gruesome rawness, and visceral detail in the imagery are a sight to behold. The voice acting is decent. The characters have depth, and I was hooked until the end. The ending also felt like a conclusive finish, and while I still wanted to know more about a few of the characters, their mystery might be on purpose. If you love 90s point-and-click adventures or just love gory art in games, then look no further.
You start the game as a married couple who do contract work for private companies. Mostly rescue and salvage operations. Mac and Charlie have their own unique skills. Charlie can take two items together to combine them, and Mac can break a single item apart into a new item. You will use these features throughout the entire game, as items can be swapped between characters at any time, making backtracking a minimal thing. Oddly, this trick is never explained, as how do these items warp between characters no matter what situation they are in? Moses is your third character, introduced late in the first chapter, and he has no abilities. He is an animatronic bear with some sort of AI.
Just like in the first game, you can click around to move the characters on the pre-rendered backgrounds. Right-clicking will flash green and blue dots on the screen. Green are descriptive items, and blue are interactive ones. Always go for the blue. Each screen usually has something to interact with, and if you run out of things to do, then another character needs to advance the story somehow. The swapping of objects is how you solve puzzles. Some puzzles are strewn across all the characters who need to do something. Create a new object, find an object, break down an object, or something along those lines.
Cut scenes are all voiced, with pre-rendered scenes sprinkled here and there. Every time you enter a new area or interact with a blue object, a cutscene usually plays. The story is well-detailed, and it takes its time over the 8–10 hours it takes to complete the game. The salvage operation turns into a horror and nightmarish hellscape quickly, and the descent is pretty amazing. The visuals change constantly as you progress, and you always run into "WTF?" moments. The Brotherhood is great at making the game look like a 90s point-and-click with fantastically drawn art. A mix of their own style fused with H.R. Giger is just wonderful, and I can't get enough of it. If you liked the look of the recently released Scorn, you will love the art in this game.
A lot of disturbing imagery fills this game. Flayed bodies, disemboweled creatures, eerily humanoid androids, and weird aliens The list goes on, and every time you interact with one that ends up being a blue object, you get an up-close, full view, and it's marvelous and incredibly disturbing. The Brotherhood set the bar in the art department for retro point-and-click games. Every screen has something new to look at, and I couldn't wait to see what they would show visually. Thankfully, the voice acting is pretty good, and the pre-rendered cut scenes are janky, but in that classic '90s way, that's so bad it's good. They are clearly made this way on purpose, and I love it.
Thankfully, I always felt a sense of progression thanks to the lack of backtracking. The worst it got was when I remembered a clue maybe six screens back and forgot to take a photo or screenshot of it. Usually, it was my own fault. Puzzles are also not insanely cryptic. Usually, some fiddling here, some thinking there, and you always get that "AHA!" moment fairly quickly. Every time I got a new object, I would try it out on the next blue object for each character. Some items get held on to for hours at a time; some are used right away; but few are obvious in their uses.
Overall, Bone Totem is a great follow-up to the original. The gorgeous art, dark horror, gruesome rawness, and visceral detail in the imagery are a sight to behold. The voice acting is decent. The characters have depth, and I was hooked until the end. The ending also felt like a conclusive finish, and while I still wanted to know more about a few of the characters, their mystery might be on purpose. If you love 90s point-and-click adventures or just love gory art in games, then look no further.
The sequel to Stasis, a truly underrated horror adventure game, expands everything in a number of ways. Expanding the cast to three principle characters was a brilliant move: it makes solving puzzles between several rooms exciting instead of tedious, and it gives you plenty of colorful chatter.
The gore and body horror still stretches from effective to juvenile at times, but when it comes to bleak, sci-fi tragedy (with a few excellent jokes sprinkled in to lighten the mood), Bone Totem delivers in spades.
The gore and body horror still stretches from effective to juvenile at times, but when it comes to bleak, sci-fi tragedy (with a few excellent jokes sprinkled in to lighten the mood), Bone Totem delivers in spades.
I don’t want this to be an excessively scathing review, what The Brotherhood devs did here is an amazing work of love and I encourage them to pursue their vision as much as they can and at the best of their capabilities. Contrary to many horror games, those made of poor and cheap ideas thrown around for shock value to create the bare minimum Outlast-clone, Stasis Bone Totem is far more than competently made, with a clear image behind, engaging concepts, strong writing and intriguing puzzles, and the sum of each part is a chore to play.
For example, it’s a given apparently that point-and-click adventure games must have some sections with a sprawling, intertwined map where multiple interactions must be followed simultaneously to progress, at the risk of having maybe too much backtracking, unintuitive inventory puzzles and some areas that are visually less interesting than others. That is the entirety of this game.
There are so, so, so many screens to traverse that at one point I dreaded finding new places rather than feeling curious at what might expect me. In no small part because there are clear limits in what the map design could achieve with texture and effects alone, and so much of the impact was conveyed through written descriptions, of gore, flora, environments, decors and so on, and they are fine, evocative even, but there is just too much of them.
I don't think a horror game necessarily loses its spark when the danger and mystery behind it are solved, but there is a moment when the balance between subtext and text is broken in favour of the latter and, at that point, you start to think the game is actively wasting your time. Each time I found a new room and scanned it with the ping, ten new green points with no interactions but text would pop up and I shivered at the idea of having to find and read each of them. That’s not even mentioning what I felt whenever a new PDA showed up. The cardinal sin, however, is having entire areas devoid of anything but items to pick up or just descriptions; if a room is only there to make the player walk more from one puzzle to the other instead of offering anything worthwhile but text, that room should not be there in the first place.
Same goes for the dialogues between the characters, there are only amazing voice performances in the game, and the players will absolutely take note of that because the characters never ever shut up. Every minute, interesting thing in the game necessitates for them to actively react and describe, talk between each other about what’s clearly there in front of them and it’s excruciating. It’s fine in terms of showing their interactions, the family dynamics and how they feel in key moments, but again it’s just too much text, just let me find something disturbing and react to it before any of these berks have something to say about it.
Between the end of chapter 2 and the halfway point of chapter 3 I was detached from anything that was happening in the story. There had been some interesting twists, but I had to run around empty maps so much, between so much text and hearing so much of the same reactions and dialogue from the cast, that it made some of my favourite tropes (the underwater horror, being trapped in a sci-fi confinement, violent murder mysteries and the moral implications of what capitalism and religion do to people) felt cheap and overwritten.
Sometimes it felt like the developers knew this too, because there were many terminals and documents scattered around with barely any text or commentary but simply pictures of experiments and unknown lifeforms or old drawings of alien schematics, and they were just so much more effective precisely because there was no explanation or reaction.
Stasis Bone Totem is kind of worth the effort though, I kept going ‘til the end because this is the type of video game that needs to be made. Just last year we had Signalis and Iron Lung, among many others I certainly have not even heard of, and they did nail the feeling of being trapped, haunted, oppressed, helpless but having to move forward, and they clearly conveyed all these emotions through gameplay and very little with straightforward narration, because in such hostile and terrifying situations the mind can fill in the blanks immensely well. A lot of work was put into SBT, amazing and effective work, just too much work for the kind of experience, I think, it was going for.
For example, it’s a given apparently that point-and-click adventure games must have some sections with a sprawling, intertwined map where multiple interactions must be followed simultaneously to progress, at the risk of having maybe too much backtracking, unintuitive inventory puzzles and some areas that are visually less interesting than others. That is the entirety of this game.
There are so, so, so many screens to traverse that at one point I dreaded finding new places rather than feeling curious at what might expect me. In no small part because there are clear limits in what the map design could achieve with texture and effects alone, and so much of the impact was conveyed through written descriptions, of gore, flora, environments, decors and so on, and they are fine, evocative even, but there is just too much of them.
I don't think a horror game necessarily loses its spark when the danger and mystery behind it are solved, but there is a moment when the balance between subtext and text is broken in favour of the latter and, at that point, you start to think the game is actively wasting your time. Each time I found a new room and scanned it with the ping, ten new green points with no interactions but text would pop up and I shivered at the idea of having to find and read each of them. That’s not even mentioning what I felt whenever a new PDA showed up. The cardinal sin, however, is having entire areas devoid of anything but items to pick up or just descriptions; if a room is only there to make the player walk more from one puzzle to the other instead of offering anything worthwhile but text, that room should not be there in the first place.
Same goes for the dialogues between the characters, there are only amazing voice performances in the game, and the players will absolutely take note of that because the characters never ever shut up. Every minute, interesting thing in the game necessitates for them to actively react and describe, talk between each other about what’s clearly there in front of them and it’s excruciating. It’s fine in terms of showing their interactions, the family dynamics and how they feel in key moments, but again it’s just too much text, just let me find something disturbing and react to it before any of these berks have something to say about it.
Between the end of chapter 2 and the halfway point of chapter 3 I was detached from anything that was happening in the story. There had been some interesting twists, but I had to run around empty maps so much, between so much text and hearing so much of the same reactions and dialogue from the cast, that it made some of my favourite tropes (the underwater horror, being trapped in a sci-fi confinement, violent murder mysteries and the moral implications of what capitalism and religion do to people) felt cheap and overwritten.
Sometimes it felt like the developers knew this too, because there were many terminals and documents scattered around with barely any text or commentary but simply pictures of experiments and unknown lifeforms or old drawings of alien schematics, and they were just so much more effective precisely because there was no explanation or reaction.
Stasis Bone Totem is kind of worth the effort though, I kept going ‘til the end because this is the type of video game that needs to be made. Just last year we had Signalis and Iron Lung, among many others I certainly have not even heard of, and they did nail the feeling of being trapped, haunted, oppressed, helpless but having to move forward, and they clearly conveyed all these emotions through gameplay and very little with straightforward narration, because in such hostile and terrifying situations the mind can fill in the blanks immensely well. A lot of work was put into SBT, amazing and effective work, just too much work for the kind of experience, I think, it was going for.